


Brothers and Sisters

by psocoptera



Category: Iskryne Series - Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Genderqueer Character, Psychic Wolves, Strap-Ons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 06:29:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alfgyfa is grown up and causing problems; Fargrimr tries to solve one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brothers and Sisters

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Petra and Dira for another year of Psychic Wolves! Happy Lupercalia!
> 
> Character intro if you haven't read the Iskryne books:
> 
> Fargrimr is (canonically) a sworn-man, a female-bodied person raised as a girl (happily, as far as we know) until changing circumstances led her father to need a male heir, an accepted option in Iskryne society. Sworn-men take male pronouns, female lovers (Iskryne m/m sex is taboo, except for wolfbrothers, for whom it's mandatory), and otherwise are men for all social purposes (except they can't marry). But it's not a secret that they still have female parts under there.
> 
> Alfgyfa is (canonically) "being raised by wolves like a hero of legend". Isolfr plans to apprentice her off to the elves, a plan which, like so many parental intentions, I think is doomed to crash into the reality of her not willing to be separated from the pack. In canon, wolves are never bonded by women; in this story, Alfgyfa has grown up and become the first to do so, and not just some runt, but a clear alpha-wolf-in-the-making. I think this would be disturbing for Iskryne people not just as violation of gender roles, but because everyone thought it was biologically impossible, sort of like a man getting pregnant. If Alfgyfa would become a sworn-man, that would at least solve the social-role problem, but in my story, she won't (and I think she would thus be, by insisting on identifying in her birth gender, the more gender-transgressive of the two of them in Iskryne terms). Oh, and everyone takes a new name when they get a wolf, just to further confuse things.
> 
> Warning for unsafe/unhygienic practices with sex toys, I don't picture Iskryne people as very, um, careful about stuff like that.

***

"You're here to talk to me?"

Fargrimr startled from where he had been dozing off by the fire like a grandfather. The young person standing before him wore a face of barely-restrained impatience; it was the face of someone who had been _talked to_ a great deal and cared for little of it.

He nodded. "Hello," he started to say, as he had to the other wolfcarls in the hall, and then caught himself. "Hello," he said instead, to Isolfr's daughter.

Her smirk was almost audible. "How long did you think about which way to go there?" she asked, sitting down by the fire. "Weighing the pros and cons?"

"Not as long as you did, I'm sure," Fargrimr answered. "Although I still think it might have been easier the other way."

"Isn't that what you're here to lecture me about? The one man I'd have to listen to?"

Fargrimr smiled at her emphasis on _man_. "It's not _my_ problem whether you name yourself Ulfvinr or Ulfvinkona."

The young woman waved her hand around. "Then you're the only one in the hall that thinks that." She sighed. "Half of them think I should be in the village, the other half think I belong in their beds. And Father still hopes I'll take myself off to the elves and prentice myself to smithing."

"Still?" Fargrimr asked. "But... your brother?"

As if summoned, a grey snout poked through the doorway, and then the rest of the head. Fargrimr blinked as the wolf kept coming and coming; it seemed like a very long time until the tip of the tail cleared the doorway. The wolf was truly massive, possibly the largest male in the wolfthreat, and Fargrimr had a new understanding for the men who had argued that the _problem of Alfgyfa_ was not just one less-than-suitable wolfcarl.

The giant wolf wound himself around his sister, and she buried her face happily in his fur.

"Viradechtis called me _streak of snot on the ruff_ when I was a kid," she said, half-muffled by her wolf. "She meant it with affection, that I was the only kid in the heall she'd let wipe their nose on her like that. But I hated it. I wanted a scent-name like my father's, like cold ice, not _boogers_. When I was fourteen, I went hunting with her, one day, and she caught a rabbit, and I was gutting it for her, and I got my bloods, for the first time."

She flicked a glance at Fargrimr, like she expected him to make the face that men made when women talked of women's matters. Fargrimr had never been able to take masculinity quite that far, though, and after a moment she went on.

"She - I'm not sure how to explain this. She finally agreed that I wasn't a kid any more, and she changed my name. Only, she changed it to that moment of acknowledgment, there in the woods, with the two bloods, the rabbit and me, and so that's me, _two-bloods_ , and I refuse to pretend I don't have a cunt when it's right there in my name."

In the firelight, her narrowed eyes glittered with defiance. Fargrimr himself had been a dutiful daughter, and then a dutiful son (although he'd never tried to act like his cunt wasn't _there_ , really, only that it wasn't important), but he could see that Alfgyfa - Ulfvinkona, now - was forged from different metal.

He smiled diplomatically, and Ulfvinkona, braced to argue further, slumped a little.

"Listen to me, I'm a skald now. Why are you here, um, begging your pardon?"

Fargrimr held up his finger, a skald's trick of his own, and when the pause had stretched just long enough, he announced, "I'm here to solve one of your problems."

She could hardly have looked more skeptical, the universal look of impatient young persons thinking "what could _you_ offer _me_ , old man".

Rather than take insult, he fished around in the bag he'd brought with him and held the thing up.

Ulfvinkona's eyes widened in a most gratifying fashion.

"I may not be a wolfbrother, but I do know what goes on in a mating," he said. "And sooner rather than later, by the look of your brother there."

"Fjall is still young," she said, the most diplomatic thing he'd heard out of her, but he could still hear the unspoken "but", that he surely would be chosen in an open mating soon, and might make a wolfjarl of her not much later. "So that's - " She couldn't help reaching out for it, and Fargrimr laughed, inside, remembering doing the same thing, the first time he'd seen one.

"What nature did not give us, we must arrange for ourselves," he said with a wink. "Shall I show you how to put it on?"

She snatched it out of his hand, saying, "I'm sure I can - ". Then she laughed and shook her head at the tangle of straps. "Actually, yes."

Fargrimr helped her with the belt and straps, and when it was all adjusted, Ulfvinkona stroked the new phallus sprouting from her groin with satisfaction.

"Grease it as any man would, taking a sister's brother," Fargrimr explained. "Clean and oil the leather between uses…" She was raising her eyebrows at him. "What."

"I think I might need some more _hands-on_ instruction," she said, waggling her eyebrows and leering until he couldn't help but laugh. She was busily undoing the straps he had just done up, but when she finished, and moved to shuck her trousers, he reached out to stop her.

"You're not serious."

She looked back at him, phallus in hand, a cockier young man than he'd ever been.

"Why not? Shouldn't go virgin into mating, and I don't see volunteers lining up around here." She paused, looking at Fargrimr like she was really considering him for the first time. "Unless you don't - I meant no insult."

Fargrimr waved her down. "No insult, I've known both ends of the, er, stick."

"There you go, then, perfect person to initiate me." She tilted her hips and lowered her lashes, suddenly all flirtatious girl - Fargrimr was getting a little dizzy from the changes. "We could do it the other way round at first, if you'd like."

"I'm old enough to be your - parent!" Fargrimr objected, stumbling over the choice of noun in a way that (he would have to concede) undercut his argument somewhat.

She looked left and right, then circled her chin, obviously meaning to take in the whole of the wolfheall. "I'm prepared to have no choice at all," she said pointedly. "You could help me be, ah, even more prepared."

Fargrimr seized on the first part. "We are _in the wolfheall_ ," he said, "I can hardly - "

Ulfvinkona rolled her eyes. "No one will interrupt us with Fjall at the door," she said, and took hold of the hem of her shirt.

Fargrimr reached for his next objection, and found, to his surprise, that he didn't have one. Ulfvinkona had inherited Isolfr's pale beauty, now livened by a pink flush in her cheeks, and he could see that she had the muscles, like he did, of a fighting man. Girls who wanted to bed a sworn-man were always a little adventurous, but Ulfvinkona would be something special.

"All right," he said, sitting down to remove his boots, and she grinned at him and sent Fjall to the door.

***

"You know," Ulfvinkona said, already starting to breathe heavily again, "I really would be happy to try it the other way round." She pushed Fargrimr down onto his back and started detaching the device from herself. Fargrimr, who was starting to wonder if he might actually die of her voracity, a happy old man to be sure, nodded dazedly and took over the task of installing it over his own pleasantly aching parts, while Ulfvinkona plundered the rapidly-depleting salve. She kneeled up over him as she anointed herself front and back. "I've seen which way _you_ like it best," she said, "But I need to know for myself," and Fargrimr could only smile and welcome her, the only man in the wolfheall grateful she hadn't been born Isolfr's son.


End file.
